The Last Gasp of a Laughing Man
by azathoth01
Summary: In a world where Bruce Wayne stands on equal footing with Gods and Extra-Dimensional Beings, it is easy to forget that he and his enemies are only human. No-One, a meticulous and unemotional killer, reminds them just how mortal they all are.
1. Chapter 1

This is my very first fanfic entry. I made this story because all of the comics I've read lately with Batman had no real consequences. Sure civilians died, and maybe some bones were broken, but in a storyline where the main villain is wearing his own face as a mask, I should not be able to guess exactly what's going to happen.

Anyway, I would love to hear any and all criticisms, but please keep it constructive. Thanks for your time!

In the middle of a pitch black room, a man was restrained to a chair. Somewhere in the distance this man heard a switch click. A blinding light stabbed his eyes, but he could make out the outline of a man.

Strangely, this man was not unused to being restrained. His mind had immediately begun to evaluate his situation. He observed that his entire body was encased in a metal shell, which had been bolted to the chair. The metal cocoon was intricately designed; the hand segments even had particular forms for his fingers, rendering any kind of movement impossible.

His second observation was that, underneath the cocoon, he was entirely unclothed. A discomforting fact for numerous reasons.

The screech of a metal chair caught the imprisoned man's attention. The initial blindness caused by the light had diminished; the man was free to observe the person he assumed was his kidnapper.

"I am sorry about the metal cage. I know how much experience you have at escaping prisons, and this seemed to be the only way I could guarantee that you would remain immobilized." The man who had imprisoned him sat down. "Don't worry, Batman. I have no desire to hurt you or anyone you love. You will be released fairly soon, and without a single scratch on your body. I have brought you here," the man gestured to the room, "to have a little conversation with you." The Dark Knight looked at his captor guardedly.

Unlike so many of his adversaries, this man had made no attempt to distinguish himself from the plethora of psychopaths and villains Batman dealt with on a daily basis. There was no mask, weapon, or even clothing choice that could be used to set him apart from anyone else.

Batman berated himself silently. How on earth had this nonentity captured him?! Whoever he was, his training must have been extraordinary.

The Dark Knight forced himself to ignore those thoughts. He needed to absorb as much detail as possible. He couldn't see any walls, but the floor beneath him was concrete. When the man spoke, his voice echoed, leading to the conclusion that the enclosure must have been large.

It took the Bat a moment of looking at the man to really see him. It was as if he were a fae creature, using a glamour to disguise himself; there was no tension anywhere in his body, not a trace of anxiety. If you were to see him in a crowd you would forget him almost as soon as you looked away.

After a few moments of careful study, Batman came to the conclusion that this man, whoever he was, was extraordinarily dangerous. All of his movements were efficient. They seemed almost slow, but they were merely calculated. He wasted not a single scrap of energy.

He judged that the man couldn't weigh more than 200 pounds, but the loose clothing made it difficult to to evaluate his musculature.

He had been speaking, but the Bat only caught the tail end the sentence "...been wanting to meet you for some time. I am quite a fan of your work. Saving people is a desire everyone should nurture." The man had left his chair and was talking to his captive from a far corner. The sound of wheels followed the steps of the man's booted shoes. "Klicka CLACKA klicka clacka kliCKa ClackA." The man's back emerged into the light, and Batman saw that he was pulling a gurney. He turned the gurney sideways, and used a lever to incline it so that the restrained man would be held upright. It was Zsasz. The man was careful to hold the gurney in places that were covered in plastic bags. He removed them, and threw them into a small flame he had set up in a metal bowl on the table.

"This man is quite strange," the kidnapper said in his unemotional meter. Zsasz was gagged, and completely naked. The abductor removed the gag.

"Let me out of here, zombie!"

The man ignored Zsasz. He walked again into the darkness, and another switch turned on a light over a table of weapons. There were a number of different guns and bullets. The man picked up a .9 mm pistol and walked back to Zsasz. He placed the gun against the killer's temple. "You are going to be very quiet until I tell you that you can speak again, or I will kill you."

The belligerent psychopath ignored the man. "I don't take orders from zombies! Let me out of-"

POP!

The serial killer's head lolled to the side. A small hole on the left side of his head leaked blood.

Batman's face was aghast. He had expected the man to try and make some sort of deal. The kidnapper looked at the Dark Knight's shocked face. "I warned him." The killer sighed tiredly, and wheeled Zsasz off to the side. He brought out a new gurney. This one had Croc on it. The killer went through the same process with the plastic bags that he had gone through with Zsasz. "This one was not the easiest to catch, but he was by no means the most difficult." Croc was strapped with a similar metal cocoon, although Batman recognized that the metal was titanium.

"The metal was the the most difficult. I do not have access to the funds that you do, but I managed to get what I needed."

Killer Croc was also gagged, but, instead of simple rope, his jaw was covered with the same titanium. The kidnapper went back to the table and picked out a large socket wrench.

Up to this point, Batman had either wanted to observe or had been in shock. Both scenarios stole his ability to speak from him. The sound returned to his voice, and he shouted.

"Who are you?"

"No one of great importance." The man didn't even bother to turn.

The Bat was flabbergasted. "You can't kill these people!" The man had walked back to Croc and was unfastening the bolts from his jaw.

"Why not," he asked.

The last bolt came off. Croc lunged his head forward as much as he could, snapping at his kidnapper's hand. All the monster got was a blow to the head, hard enough to silence him for a few moments.

"Sincerely, Batman, I want to know why I should not kill this man. If you can call this genetic abomination a man."

He sat down on the chair that he had moved in front of the vigilante. "Batman, if you can justify why this man killed and cannibalized so many people, I will not kill him."

The man sat in front of the Bat, waiting. He wasn't enjoying this, that much the Dark Knight could tell. This wasn't about humiliation, or power. There wasn't an emotion on his face. This was a man you could torture for hours, and he wouldn't even flinch.

"Let me outta this thing!" Croc shouted from behind them. The man turned slightly to look Croc in the eye.

"Do you see that body?" He gestured to the corpse. Croc turned his head. "That was once Victor Zsasz. I told him quite politely to stop speaking, and he did not listen. I shot him in the head. Talk again without my permission, and the same fate will befall you."

Croc nodded, mollified. "Now then," the kidnapper turned back to the Bat, "Can you justify any of those crimes?"

"No, I can't."

"Then tell me why I should not kill him. He murdered and ate parts of many of his victims, and not necessarily in that order. It seems like a fairly good reason to kill him."

"Who are you to play God? Who are you to judge others? It is not your place-"

"I could ask those same questions of anyone in the justice department. What exactly is the difference between a jury killing a man for murder and the murderer's crime itself? I have yet to find one."

"The justice system is meticulous! It requires evidence, a trial with multiple jurors. It's there to make sure-"

"That simply will not do. There are dozens of trials with mountains of evidence against this…. man. And are you really going to argue that some arbitrary number of people is all it takes to decide a person should die?"

Batman started to talk again, but the kidnapper cut him off. "I can tell where you are going next, but even you can not tell me that you honestly believe that this man can be rehabilitated. We have killed people in this country for skin color, their faith, and pieces of amalgamated cloth and paper with dead men's faces on them. None of these reasons are just. There are holes in every single argument. And yet we kill anyway. Because we know that certain people need to die, including those I will show you tonight."

Batman began pleading for Croc's life, and Croc started to shout obscenities. The man stood from his chair, grabbed a rifle, put it against Croc's skull, and pulled the trigger.

The gun had the desired effect.

_**Months Earlier**_

Bruce Wayne sat in his board room, trying desperately to listen to his board members drone on and on about stock prices, new directions, and other such lukewarm business phrases that tasted of bland oatmeal; the kind of soulless language that made him desire his next fight with a drunken thug, where the criminal at least had the balls to say something without transforming it into a multisyllabic beating of simple, straightforward language.

It didn't help that he was constantly on edge. All of his B-list villains were disappearing from the streets or prisons or dens of iniquity, and some of his A-list villains as well. He felt that this was leading to something big.

Months of almost complete radio silence, save a few spats between Two Face and Scarecrow. Even the Joker had been unusually quiet, but Wayne at least had the comfort of knowing he was once again locked away in Arkham. He could only hope that whatever was happening wouldn't involve the Clown.

The truly disturbing thing was that he hadn't detected a single piece of evidence for any of the criminals. The Ventriloquist, The Hatter, Zsasz, Calendar Man, all of them gone, with not a whisper of any plan. At first he had suspected some sort of team up. They happened sporadically. Joker would try to enlist Bane and Croc to be the muscle, or Dr. Freeze would work with the Scarecrow in the hopes of creating some cure for his beloved frozen bride.

But this was not a team up of any sort he had encountered before, if it was that. The team ups usually consisted of villains in their own social bracket. Joker, Two Face, Scarecrow etc. would never team up with the likes of the The Ventriloquist or Killer Moth.

Further evidence against the idea of a team up was the sheer amount of villains that were gone. Batman had battled against convoluted organizations with schizophrenic missions statements and half baked codes of ethics that had somehow amassed legions of followers who were more than willing to throw themselves into whatever the leaders of the organization wanted. The villains that were off the street currently, however, were either too stupid, too weak, or simply too crazy for anything like that.

This, he felt, had several very unsettling implications.

The meeting ended as they always did; no decisions were really made and nothing was really said. The Wayne Corporation was run by Bruce, and it received all the meticulous concern that everything else he did was given. These meetings were little more than jerk off sessions for the rest of the board members, so that they could pretend that their thoughts and opinions meant anything at all, with the exception of Fox.

Bruce went to the Bat-cave and suited up. If there was any silver lining to his more distressing villains being gone, it was that he could now focus his efforts entirely on the criminals that mattered.

The A-list villains were no different than high exposure politicians, really. They could be brilliant, and capable of truly extraordinary feats just by themselves, but without the plethora of grunt criminals to do the heavy lifting. Even villains like Joker and Two Face had to bow to their human limitations. Were they dangerous without the legions of criminals that their twisted minds seemed to attract? Certainly, and enormously so, but without those thugs the super villains of Gotham were little more than psychopaths with stupid gimmicks.

The night was rather dull. He scared a few dumb kids out of stealing a TV, stopped a dozen muggings and saved a woman from overdosing. These tame crimes, while being beneath his skill level, were infinitely better than the Joker killing dozens for the sake of some symbol that only made sense to him, or Two Face robbing a bank in one of his painfully reaching obsessions with the number two.

The city was deeply quiet and calm. Nights like these made him uneasy; nights where he didn't have to use every scrap of energy to just keep Gotham sane. Experience had shown that nights like these were the eye of a terrifying storm; the deep breath before the icy, pitch black, horrifying plunge. Peace terrified him.

Weeks went on like that. Petty crimes were all that was left. Meanwhile, the A-list criminals were disappearing at a faster and faster rate. Then Ra's al Ghul disappeared.

He learned of it as he always did: from Talia.

Bruce woke to a feeling of apprehension. He paid close attention to this feeling. He neither saw, heard, tasted, or smelled anything, but deep in his gut, he felt something. Wayne walked the hallways of his mansion, keeping closely to the shadows and methodically examining every part of his home.

She jumped from the shadows in his main study, and came at him with daggers. They fought for mere minutes, but in those minutes attacker and defender showed an understanding and mastery of martial arts that was astounding.

Batman managed to disarm the attacker and subdue her. He removed her mask and revealed her to be Ra's daughter. "Talia?! What are you doing here? Why are you attacking me this time?"

"You know why! You've kidnapped my father!" She attempted to fight the Bat again, but was subdued.

"Don't be ridiculous! Why on earth would I kidnap your father!"

She struggled impotently. "You've imprisoned him!"

Wayne struck her once, trying to knock some sense into her. "What evidence do you have of that? Where would I put him?"

She relented. Batman allowed her to stand, but looked at her guardedly. "I am sorry, Bruce. You are the only one I can think of who could have done it. " Bruce looked at Talia curiously.

"Tell me what happened."

She sighed. "Thats the problem. I have no idea what happened." She sat down "One day my father was at the facility, putting together another plan, and the next he was just… gone…"

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean disappeared. The League of Shadows have been scouring the Earth for him for almost a week. Somehow, someone snuck into the League of Shadows, the best trained and most disciplined group of warriors that has ever existed, and kidnapped their leader, without leaving a single, solitary clue. We, the masters of deception, we, the people who wear the shadow like clothing, we were beaten out by someone. I thought that if anyone could do it, it would have to be you. But that doesn't seem to be the case."

She sat in silence for a while.

"Talia," said Bruce, "Would you be willing to let me examine his rooms?"

She laughed. "Thats not going to happen, Wayne. My followers have been sufficiently motivated to find my father. And when we do find the person that stole him away, we will kill him."

Talia Ghul stood. "I hope you don't stand in our way, Bruce. I need to see this man dead."

"Don't be a fool, Talia. For months villains of mine have been disappearing as if they had turned into vapor. Whoever is doing this is extraordinarily dangerous. I'd watch your back."

Tali stood silently listening with her back to him. When he was done, she leapt out a window.

He went to the Batcave, and pulled up the list of missing criminals, which had grown frighteningly large. Bruce added Ra's to the list, and once again read through all the files. He scoured every page for a possible connection. Many of the villains did have enemies in common, but none so skilled as to be able to sneak into the League of Shadows and walk out without alerting a single soldier.

Alfred came down at about five in the morning, where he found Wayne still sifting through gigabytes of data. "Master Wayne, may I offer you some breakfast?"

"Thank you, Alfred." Wayne bit into a hearty chunk of texas toast with an egg grilled into it.  
"This is amazing, as usual." Bruce looked back at the screen of villains.

"May I ask what you are doing looking through your data logs again, Master Wayne? It was my impression that the criminal world of Gotham had become very quiet lately." Bruce nodded, and swallowed another large bite of toast.

"Thats why I'm looking, Alfred. It was my impression that perhaps these villains were creating some sort of team, but with the addition of Ra's that idea is officially dead. Ra's would never work with someone like Croc or Grundy. But these villains are all gone; kidnapped without a single piece of evidence. I didn't realize till about the 50th villain that no evidence or M.O. was in and of itself an M.O."

Alfred looked at the screen. "I don't quite follow what you mean, sir."

Bruce turned from the screen and looked at his oldest friend. "Beyond a shadow of a doubt, these villains have been kidnapped by a person or persons unknown. Whoever has done this has a degree of skill that I have yet to leave no evidence, and, unlike many of my other enemies, leave no calling cards. What do you make of this, Alfred?"

Pennyworth considered for a moment. "The training they posses must be at least as great as yours, Master Wayne, which is a worrying thought indeed. They are also planning something quite intricate and have no qualms about playing a long waiting game in order to achieve their goals. Their quiet approach also suggests that they do not want their ego inflated, much unlike your many other adversaries. Have I missed anything, sir?"

Wayne had been nodding along while reading through the data logs. "As always, Alfred, you hit many of the same thoughts I did. One thing I think you missed though; whatever it is they're planning, it's going to happen soon. Only three villains remain: Joker, Two Face, and Ivy."

Alfred agreed and said "Perhaps it would be wise to increase guards on those particular villains. A suggestion to Gordon would also be wise, don't you think?"

Wayne nodded. "I'll be sure to say something to him, although I doubt it'll do much. If the League of Shadows were outsmarted by whoever did this, I doubt a few more members of the G.C.P.D. will stop them."

That night, Batman followed through on what he said.

"Gordon," he whispered. The commissioner nearly jumped out of his office seat. "Goddamit, Batman, I'm fifty years old! Stop trying to give me a heart attack or one day you will." The commissioner stamped out a cigarette that he had dropped on his office floor. He pulled another one out and took a deep, calming drag on it.

"So," he said, "Any news on the person we can thank for taking all the crazy people out of Gotham?"

Batman shook his head. "Every kidnapping is the same: no sign of forced entry, nothing to say that there was a struggle, not even a single piece of hair. Whoever this is, their attention to detail is more meticulous than a precision machinist. I'm going to need you to increase the guard on the remaining criminals."

Gordon took another puff, eyeing the Bat. "You know, Batman, at first I thought it was you." Gordon couldn't see it, but the Dark Knight raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? And why's that Commissioner?"

Jim shrugged. "I didn't think it right off the bat, but after 20 or so minor villains and a handful of major ones, I figured 'maybe he's come up with some way to imprison all of them. Maybe he's just hiding how he's doing it so that he can keep catching the criminals off guard. Maybe he's tired of their constant escapes from Arkham, and has put them into cells that would be considered inhumane and illegal by most of society.'" He took another deep drag on his smoke.

Batman studied the commissioner's careful casualness. He knew when he was being studied. Gordon was no slouch. Years of police work had taught him how to read people. The Bat and the Commissioner now had a silent battle while they observed each other, trying to figure each other out.

Uncharacteristically, the Dark Knight broke the silence. "What convinced you that I'm not responsible?"

The commissioner shrugged. "Who says I am convinced? If it is you, then hey, at least I know they're not going to escape from whatever contraption you have them in. Not for a long time, anyway. And if it isn't you, then I owe whoever has them a big thank you for months of peaceful streets. Compared to the mayhem that Gotham usually experiences on a daily basis, it's been heaven in this city.

The commissioner finished his cigarette, and lit another one.

"Do you think maybe I killed them?" The Bat watched Jim carefully. The practiced control of bodily movements learned from years of interrogations would have been missed by most, but to the detective they may as well have been a handwritten note.

Gordon walked to a window and looked out onto the skyline. Usually Gotham was covered in so much crime that he couldn't afford to ever look up from raped girls or desiccated corpses and admire the city. But the silence allowed him, for the first time in years, to notice just how beautiful it was.

"Batman, I've known you for years now. Close to two decades. In that time, I've come to know that you'll do everything in your power to apprehend and stop criminals, not kill them." Another toke. "But I also know that if you ever did break, there's no way you'd ever leave any evidence. And some part of you knows that if there were some proof that you brutally murdered every single one of those filthy degenerate animals… well, let's just say that at the age of 50, my memory is a bit off, and I tend to lose a great deal of important documents."

When Gordon turned around, the Bat was gone. He stood alone in the empty room, hands at his side while cigarette smoke floated up, curling and coiling around his body. He went back to the window and smoked in the dark, listening to the sound of his silent city.

_**Back with the kidnapper**_

There were 15 bodies off to the side, all of them motionless. The sound of a knife scraping against a plate, the quiet sound of chewing, and the heaviness of breathe were the only sounds.

The kidnapper was dining on a meal of fried chicken, green beans, and potatoes.

"Are you hungry, Batman? I have another plate set aside if you wish."

There was no irony in his voice.

"What is the purpose of this?" The Bat spoke in frustration. "Do you enjoy humiliating me like this? Making me watch as you kill people in front of me?"

He put his fork away, and pushed the meal to the side. "Batman, do you know what the word 'overqualified' means?"

Wayne scoffed. "Of course-"

"You are its definition." If the infinite abyss had a voice, it would be his. Heart breakingly hollow; it was clear that he was not controlling his emotions, but that he had never felt anything. "Do you know how many people undergo the most disgustingly cruel existences every single day? Millions. Perhaps billions."

He pulled over Bane's body. "Do you know how many people this man has killed, Batman?"

Batman remained silent.

"Hundreds. Possibly thousands. The same is true for almost every single villain you have ever fought. They are nothing."

He pushed the gurney away. "Millions of women, of almost any age, have their genitals forcibly removed every single year. The U.S. Government tortures men and women every day for crimes that can not be proven. The Kim family destroys literally hundreds of thousands of lives without trying. In the face of all of this, what does Batman, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, who has also received the most extensive martial arts training a human can receive, do?"

He pointed at the body of the Hatter. "He punches psychopaths with bad makeup. Batman, I do not want attention. I single handedly caught all of your foes with the most basic of military plans. I even captured you. What I want is for you to use the symbol you have built to actually change the world."

"I am trying to change the world-"

"By saving affluent white people from men and women whose crimes would be laughed at by the real villains of this world? I will not deny that what these villains of yours do is evil. But when you compare their crimes with the true monsters of this world, their efforts are laughable."

"So why kill them in front of me? Why not leave their bodies out-"

"I am not doing this for thrill, Batman. I get no joy from any of this. I am killing these horrible people in front of you so that you will know that they are dead. That way you will be able to leave Gotham to the police, and focus your skills on solving problems that will affect global social change."

Batman continued to argue. "Why don't you try and do these things?"

"Because I am no one. I am just some man with a great deal of experience in capturing and killing. I do not have access to the Wayne corporation's funds, political connections, or good will from society. Bruce Wayne does. The only thing I can do is kill. But I know that if I were to kill any of the leaders of this world, I would simply be captured and gotten rid of; some new degenerate would take their place. But the Batman, he can inspire people. How amazing would it be to see the Bat Signal in the skies of North Korea as a symbol of resistance? Would it not be glorious for African women to comfort each other knowing that the Batman was on the prowl, defending them from the disgusting men who would do them harm?"

Batman remained silent.

"Batman, after I kill every single one of these people, you will be free to actually affect the world, which is what you should have been doing in the first place. I do not know what your obsession is with these criminals, but my hope is that once their influence is removed from the world, you will begin to bring down people that actually matter."

The kidnapper went back to killing the villains with his pistol. He began again with Ivy. Strangely, her powers of seduction were not blocked by an apparatus. She tried to arouse her attacker, but he simply shot her in the head, and rolled her to the side.

_**Two Weeks Before**_

The endeavor to guard the remaining villains had failed miserably. At first it had seemed to work. But one night, Ivy and Two Face vanished from their cells. The only one left was Joker.

Batman entered the Clown's cell. He hated talking to him.

"Hello, Joker." He sat stiffly across from his long time enemy.

"Hello, Bats! How's it been? I've been hearing rumors that you've locked away all my colleagues in some super prison of your own design. Is that true?"

"No, Joker, it isn't. But you are the last person left. Everyone else, from The Ventriloquist to Dr. Freeze, is gone."

The Joker smiled. "Whoever is doing this certainly has an appreciation for the theatrical, don't they, Batman?"

"How do you mean?"

"They've captured everyone but yours truly. That tells me that they have a sense of build up, of tension. They want you to know that I'm next. They want you to expect it and try to stop it."

"Anything else you've gleaned from how they work?"

He chuckled. "Its rather obvious, really. I'm surprised you don't see it. After they're done with me, who do you think they'll catch?"

Realization hit the Bat like a brick. "Me."

"Now you've got it! Personally, I would be worried, Bats. Sure, I may be collateral, but you're the one who's being sent the message."

Suddenly the lights were shut off.

"hooooehahhOHAHYEHHHAHHWhhhwe… Looks like they're coming, Bats!"

The caped crusader stood in the darkness and backed up into a corner. "Stay still, Clown. I don't want you in between me and whoever comes through that door."

The sound of guards firing rubber bullets came in the distance. Batman heard a few of them bounce of off their target, but he was apparently unfazed. The sound of a gun firing bean bags alternated with the rubber bullets, and then tear gas was thrown.

There was a practiced precision to it all. Finally, there was silence.

It stretched on and on. Batman held his breath, and even Joker obeyed the demand of the silence in the face of the moment. Then, the sound of the door opening and hinges creaking in the pitch black.

A fight ensued. In the absolute darkness, all the Joker could hear as he sat chained was the susurrus of cloth moving together and the trading of blows. It went on for a long while. Finally the sound stopped, and the Joker heard footsteps come toward him. "Is that you, Bats? Did you win?"

An empty voice spoke. "No."

_**The Hold**_

Close to a hundred dead bodies.

Batman sat stunned before it all. Every single one had been killed with a cold efficiency. A single gunshot to the head. No more. The most frightening villains in Gotham lay dead on gurneys, the candle of their lives blown out with a casual breath.

He pulled up the last gurney. It was the Joker. Of course it was. He went through the same careful hand placements that he had gone through with the dozens of others. The plastic came off, and he threw it in the fire.

"Is this man the Joker?"

Batman remained silent.

"Batman, I'm going to kill him either way. Is this the Joker?"

The Dark Knight looked up. "Yes. Yes he is."

The Killer raised the gun to the Joker's head.

"Don't! Please don't! I know he should die. I've fantasized about killing him for decades! But please, don't do it!"

"Batman, I've killed all of your other villains. Why should I st-"

"BECAUSE HE'S MY FAULT!" The Bat was on the verge of tears.

"What do you mean?"

"It was years ago. The beginning of my career. He was just some patsy, brought along to take the fall for some stupid crime."

Batman's voice was trembling with emotion. "There was an accident. He fell off the walkway into a vat of chemicals and came out like this!"

"And?"

The Bat was weeping slow tears. "If I had been faster… stronger… better… I could have saved him. Could have stopped him from becoming… this!"

A deep, controlling breath. "But that isn't what happened. I've spent my entire adult life trying to fix this man. Trying to fix all of them! And you've made my work worthless. I need to help him. If I can't save him, then what's it all been for? I need to be able to bring him back, because if you're right… If the only thing that can be done for this man is to kill him, then I am complicit in his crimes! It's me you should be killing. Not him."

More tears and racking sobs.

"Batman, I can not claim to understand your obsession with these criminals, or this city. But the world needs you to be more than just a beat cop with some more advanced training."

The killer stood in silence for a moment. "I will give you 20 minutes alone with him."

He removed the gag from the Joker's mouth and walked away into the darkness. "Your twenty minutes starts now. These will be the last words you ever speak, Joker. Use them wisely."

At first they were silent. The long time enemies took a few moments to get their bearings.

"Joker…" The Bat broke the silence. "Joker, I wish I hated you. I wish I hated all the people that man has killed tonight. You all deserve my hatred. But I don't hate any of you." The tired vigilante raised his head. "I only ever pitied you. I never thought you could turn out to be a good person, don't get me wrong… but part of me hoped that you could be helped. People have always said that this… crusade of mine... They say I do it because I need to control my life. Maybe they're right. But I've never seen it that way."

A deep breath, cleansing the sobs away. "When I was young, something awful happened. I watched my parents die in front of me. I promised myself that I would do my best to stop something like that from ever happening again. As I grew, I learned that I couldn't stop every criminal, but I've always expected myself to. A ridiculous standard, I know."

Another moment of deep silence.

"At first being Batman was all I hoped it would be. I set mobsters straight, put thugs in line… I made more ground in those first few months than I had any right to expect. Then things started going downhill. And in my youth, I made a mistake. I caused something horrible to happen to someone. To you.

"I have tried so hard to help you Joker. I can't and won't take responsibility for your crimes, but I am responsible for your existence. You have no idea how many weeks I've gone without sleep just trying to figure out what was wrong with you. But you would never let me in. And you've killed so many people. I don't know if there's anything human left in you. Maybe the man you were was completely destroyed in that vat of chemicals."

He struggled for the right words. "But I'm going to try and appeal to that man one last time. I hope he hears me."

He shuddered, breath quavering. "Whoever you are, I am so deeply sorry for what you've been through. I wish I could have helped you. I wish I could have saved you. But now it's too late for that. I'm sorry."

The Joker said nothing. What could he say that hadn't already been said a hundred times before? He knew he was going to die. And he knew he had lost. He would never haunt the Bat's life again, never cast his shadow on another person again. It was over.

The silence continued. After the 20 minute mark, the man walked back over, raised his arm, steadied it, and fired.

Batman sat motionless the entire time. The man went back to the table, and pulled out a large plastic tub, filled with what Batman guessed was acid. He pushed all the tools and weapons he had used into the bucket, put a lid on it, and then set it on a dolly. He put out the flame, and sprayed down the table with what smelled of ammonia. Batman heard the sound of wheels and then a door opening. He looked and saw that the door had never been more than 20 yards away. A trunk opened, and the sound of the tub being put into a car. The car was started, and left running.

The man walked back in and closed the door behind him. He pulled out the Bat Belt, pulled out the transmitter, and attached a small device to it.

He retrieved a television from the dark. It had a small VCR. He turned both machines on and slid a cassette in.

"The transmitter will send out a signal in one hour. That should give me enough time to drive out of your reach. I have put in _To Kill a Mockingbird_ for you so you will not be bored." He wiped down a socket wrench, sprayed it with ammonia, and laid it down next to Batman's chair.

"Goodbye, Batman. I wish you the best of luck."

He pressed the play button on the VCR, pushed the timer on the transmitter, and walked away.

He strolled out the door without looking back, leaving Batman with the sound of the cassette whirring and the silence of a hundred corpses. Batman heard the sound of a revving car, tires propelling it away, and then it was gone.

He was no one, and he had singlehandedly caught the Batman. He was no one, and he had snuck into the League of Shadows without being found out. He was no one, and he had killed the Joker.


	2. Chapter 2

Norman Coopersmith sat at his desk going through the books. Sheet metal had been on the rise for the last few months, and the company's profits were doing very well. He double checked his numbers once more and, after correcting a few minor mistakes, clocked out for the day.

He rode his bike home. He did have a car, but it was pointless to try to drive it in this traffic. Norman would arrive home faster this way, and the exercise saved him from having to do cardio at the gym.

When he rode through his suburban neighborhood, he saw children playing on their lawns in swimming suits. It seemed to be the oldest method of play in existence. That and some form of cowboys and indians.

His home wasn't large, but it was very well kept. The lawn was trimmed, and the new paint job he had finished last week looked great. It was a muted blue grey. He opened the garage and left his bike chained up on the the side opposite all of his tools. Coopersmith had been doing carpentry for most of his life, but had never been good enough to do it professionally. He enjoyed it, and the various projects he made were used as family heirlooms.

Norman went into his home through the garage into the kitchen. His wife, Jennifer, was busily chopping up carrots. After kissing her cheek, he asked her what was being made for dinner.

"Chicken noodle soup and mashed potatoes."

"Anything I can do to help?"

She gestured to a large pot of boiling water filled with potatoes. "If you could please peel and chop those potatoes for me, that would be great."

He rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands.

"How was your day, honey?" He asked.

"It wasn't that great. You know the clerk, Shawna?"

Norman gave her a blank look.

"You met her at the last Christmas party. She was the one with the long black hair and red dress."

He continued the blank look.

A sigh. "She had the biggest tits there."

"Ohhhh… Yeah, what about her?"

"She misfiled the entire Renson case folder. I'm going to have to go back on Saturday to get the project done by Monday."

Jennifer was a tax attorney. She loved the organization and precision but absolutely abhorred human interaction. Even in a career that was based on very little communication, any contact with a human drained her.

Norman had finished peeling the potatoes and was now chopping them into small pieces.

"Where's Morgan? He over at Sheen's again playing Warhammer?"

Jennifer nodded.

"He gonna be home for dinner or are Sheen's parents feeding him again?"

"He's eating at Sheen's. Marla says we owe her a week's worth of meals."

Norman chuckled. Morgan was seventeen year old boy, and his appetite proved it. He and Sheen had been friends since kindergarten and spent a good deal of time playing board games. Norman and Jennifer had never been into sports when they were younger, and they saw no need to force their child into basketball or football.

Mr. Coopersmith added milk and butter to the mixture and began mashing the potatoes. Before long, the dish was ready to serve. The couple set out bowls and silverware and sat down to eat.

After they were finished, Norman sank down into his chair and numbed his brain for a few minutes by watching mindless exploitative gore in the form of _Friday the 13th: Part 2_.

"Thanks for doing the dishes tonight," he called from his chair.

"No problem, baby. Your turn tomorrow."

He grunted to himself.

Morgan came home close to the end of the film. He sat down on the couch and whipped out his laptop.

"You get your homework done?" Norman asked.

"I've got it all done, but would you please check this English paper I've got to hand in tomorrow?"

Morgan's dad said yes and took the laptop from his son.

The paper was for some generic argumentative assignment. The title was _Not Enough Evidence_. It was a six page paper poking holes in Christianity and other faiths, and then supporting his own claim that there was no God.

"You're using the word 'so' a bunch. Right here: '...the evidence for God is so weak.'' Either get rid of the word or replace it with something stronger. Umm…"

A few more moments of silence, save the TV playing screams in the background.

"And here you're a bit wordy." He pointed to a paragraph and told his son how he might go about fixing it.

"Other than that, you're good. Great job, Morgan."

Morgan took back his laptop and made the changes his dad had suggested. Then he shut it and stared at the TV till around ten, yawned, and told his parents he was going to bed.

Jennifer told her husband to scoot over and they held each other. Norman picked out another random film, and cuddled with his wife.

"We got so lucky with Morgan."

Norman agreed. "Yeah, he turned out really well. We've done pretty good so far."

They held each other a bit longer and then retired to bed.

Norman woke at 4:30am and got dressed for the day. On his dresser was a shadow box with his picture in it along with the various medals he had received after twenty years of military service. There were also various pieces of pottery, and other such memorabilia.

Off to the side of a jade elephant there was a single playing card of the Joker.


End file.
